Robert H. Jackson Center

The America We’re Fighting For

FOR THIS WE FIGHT

NBC NETWORK, SATURDAYS, 7-7:30 P.M., E.W.T.

Program 14

September 4, 1943

The America We're Fighting For

JUSTICE ROBERT H. JACKSON, Associate Justice, U.S. Supreme Court

STUART CHASE, Author, "Goals for America," "The Road We Are Traveling," etc.

EVANS CLARK, Executive Director, The Twentieth Century Fund

BEN GRAUER, Discussion Chairman

THE TWENTIETH CENTURY FUND

330 West 42d Street, New York 18, New York

Program 14

Mr. Clark: You and I here at home, and you service men out there on a dozen fronts—we can't any of us help thinking about what kind of country we want when the fighting is over. I know some people say we should keep our minds on the fight till it's won and then face the problems of the peace. But, of course, that's not so. In time of war we should prepare for peace—we shouldn't merely dream about it.

Of course, you men who are fighting this war are doing vastly more than any of us at home. You are winning the victory that will bring us all the peace. It is up to us at home to plan now to make that peace worth fighting for.

I know that there are a lot of you fighting men who want to find home, when you come back, just the way you left it. Of course, that's true about a lot of things—your family, the sitting room and the old familiar smell of the corner grocery store. But you don't want to come back to the kind of country we had during the last 'depression-when the banks were closed, when some 13 million people couldn't find jobs and many of them had to join the bread line. When the war ends, all of us—service men and civilians alike—will want a job, a steady job—and freedom to choose it; we'll want security; we'll want, as the years go on, to be able to buy more with the wages and salaries we earn.

Ever since our country entered the war—and even before—the Twentieth Century Fund has been trying to find out, first, what problems we shall face when the war is over and, second, what is being done by various agencies, both government and private, to face and to solve those problems. I am glad to report that vastly more is being done along these lines in this war than during World War I. The Fund has catalogued and described the work of no less than 137 organizations doing concrete research and educational work on postwar problems on a national scale.

The object of the thirteen broadcasts which tonight's program opens is first to give a chance to various experts who have been working on these problems to share their findings with you, the people of the United States, and, second, to give you who listen a chance each week to ask these experts some of the questions about postwar America which you would most like to have answered. But, on this first program, we are going to take time to discuss the kind of an America we want and the role you and I—all of us Americans—can play in making it.

Mr. Chase: A friend of mine from Texas was asked what he wanted after the war. He thought a moment and said: "Free speech and groceries." You know that is a pretty good four-word definition of democracy, when you come to think of it. Free speech and groceries. It covers a lot of ground.

Free speech comes first, but people cannot eat freedom. The Bill of Rights was going strong in 1932 but thirteen to fifteen million Americans were out of work, and the sky was full of brokers and bankers who had bailed out of windows with no parachutes.

"Groceries" stand for decent living standards for every one. Most Americans would not want to take the finest living standards handed out from a government warehouse, any more than they would want to live permanently in army barracks.

We want some freedom with our groceries, and a dependable supply of groceries with our freedom. Is this possible? I don't know why not.

Most Americans need five kinds of things—the Big Five I call them: plenty of nourishing food, a decent house, adequate clothing, doctors' and dentists' services, education through high school.

Have we the manpower, the know-how and the industrial plant to provide the Big Five for every American? We have. We had enough before the war. After the war we will have more than enough. Think of the 20 billion dollars worth of new plants alone that we are building-synthetic rubber, aluminum, steel. . . .

To furnish a balanced diet for the whole population, very few more farmers would be needed. The crop pattern would have to be shifted a little. Indeed the war is already shifting it . . . less starch and more vitamins.

To provide a decent home for everyone would take about two million workers building a million and a half dwelling units a year for ten years—fifteen million houses altogether. And this would end shacks, shanties and slums.

To furnish Americans with adequate clothing would take about one million more workers than there were in the textile and garment trade before the war.

While to keep the whole nation strong and healthy would call for 300,000 more dentists, doctors and trained nurses, and perhaps as many more lay attendants in hospitals, clinics and public health work.

To provide education for all normal children through high school would require half a million more teachers and other workers in the field of education.

So you see that anywhere from three to four million workers added to the working force we had before the war would readily furnish the groceries. And yet remember that in 1940 we had eight to ten million workers unemployed.

The Big Five, you will note, do not come out of a hat. They come out of our labor, yours and mine. Work for everyone who can work will probably be the strongest demand there is after the war. Let your imagination rest for a moment upon those ten million lean hard fighting men of ours completely uninterested in selling lemons, watermelons, apples or any other fruit on street corners.

And you know full employment isn't just a job, either. It is the feeling that you belong, that you have a place, that your work amounts to something. When children are shut up with nothing to do for any length of time, as any mother knows, they are quite likely to start pulling the house down. And when grown men and women are long deprived of useful work, they are quite likely to start pulling down the social order in which they live.

Free speech, the Big Five, full employment for everyone, without discrimination, especially without racial discrimination. These are fine goals for America, but where does the rest of the world come in? A distinguished British economist told me: "I don't care what you do in America after the war. You can have a high tariff or no tariff, much foreign trade or little—so long as you do one thing."

"What?" I asked.

"So long as you keep prosperous. If you slide into a deep depression, you will drag the whole world down with you."

If our British friend is right, and I think he is, these goals are not only for our own sakes, but for the world's sake, too.

Justice Jackson: How can America determine what its domestic goals after the war shall be? And why should we bother about it now? It is already plain that the Government will be pressed in favor of many plans by various planners. Important choices must be made. Intelligent decisions take time and preparation.

We must choose a policy, because I think the events have proved that a peace will not take care of itself without a policy. We know that all about us social and economic and political currents are moving swiftly. Perhaps the most widely and ardently desired goal for America is that we keep the essentials of our system of self-government, free labor and free enterprise. We know that they can be kept only if they work reasonably well. The only choice is really this. In what direction shall we go?

America's march or drift, as the case may be, will be controlled by public opinion. Public opinion sooner or later governs every country. Even the relatively absolute power of a Mussolini, of a Czar or a Kaiser collapses soon after it loses support of public opinion. In democracies, socia1 action yields even more quickly and directly, of course, to changes of public sentiment. And you in your sector do make public opinion.

Of course you may not be able to have your own way about postwar policies, but that does not mean that you may not influence them. Democracy as developed in America is a system in which all men's opinions count—but none count too much. However much policies of government shift they never have adopted the extremes demanded by any of the conflicting groups. In fact if any class, group or individual were so dominant as to control government without regard to the opinions of others we would not continue to be a democracy.

Nor should anyone feel that his voice does not count merely because he cannot go in for nationwide broadcasts, or address vast audiences or write for papers of large circulation. Every man has an audience all about him, and a sphere of influence among his acquaintances. His influence grows and his circle widens as others come to think of him as being informed, temperate and sincere. You are really sitting right now at the source of public opinion in this country.

Nor need one be silenced or discouraged because he is pretty much alone in his views. He may be in the majority tomorrow. The course of government cannot be foretold much in advance by a count of noses. Polls may register quite fairly the proportion of people who today hold a given opinion. But the qualities which make one opinion gain ground in discussion while another loses by it have not as yet been measured. That is what keeps elections in doubt until the votes are counted. The capacity of an opinion to gain converts, depends apart from its merits, on the intensity of the convictions of those who hold it, on the intelligence with which they support it and the good sense with which they carry on its advocacy.

There is thus a difference between public opinion as a matter of intellectual preference and effective public opinion. A great majority with loose ideas may often lose a particular struggle to a minority which knows just what it wants. And plenty of pressure groups are ready to run away with the postwar policy if the American people do not develop cohesive views. Not that all must think alike on detail—but there must be agreement on the main lines of division of opinion of responsible groups. That is there cannot be indifference. Many plans will be based on the philosophy that whatever is good for the planner must be good for the country. This must be met by the intelligence and enthusiasm of those who start at the other end and reason that what is best for the whole country ultimately is best for all of its parts.

Leaders of labor and industry, of farming and trade and of government will give their opinions and proposals on this series of broadcasts. I neither oppose nor endorse any of them. But I do remind you of the importance of the broadest possible public understanding of the world we are coming into, and of your part in forming the public opinion which will guide the destinies of our country. It is for that way of governing ourselves that we fight.

DISCUSSION

Mr. Grauer: We come now to the listeners' part, the people's part of "For This We Fight," based largely on specific questions sent in by our listeners.

And now from the questions submitted this week, I would like to put this first one to Justice Jackson. One of our listeners, a private in the United States Army, wanted to ask you this question, Mr. Justice: How can we really win the war and the peace if citizens at home do not vote or take part actively in public affairs ?

Justice Jackson: Well, I suppose that we might win the war as a matter of military decision, even if the citizens do neglect to vote and to take their proper part in public affairs. The danger, of course, is that the fruits of that military decision may be frittered away unless there is intelligent and sustained control of public affairs in the interests of the citizens. My plea tonight is to keep this from being a barren victory, assuming of course that we are all doing all that can be done for an early and a decisive victory.

Mr. Grauer: Mr. Clark, for you as Director of the Twentieth Century Fund, I have this question: Would you tell us what you believe are some of the major postwar problems we will face here at home after the war?

Mr. Clark: Well, Mr. Grauer, that is a large order to fill in fifty seconds.

Mr. Grauer: Take longer, if you wish.

Mr. Clark: We will have to face two kinds of problems, the short-run and the long-run. The biggest short-run problems will be: first, those of bringing our fighting forces back from the battle fronts and training camps and finding them jobs; second, those of changing over our industrial plant from war to peacetime production—the tremendous jobs of contract termination, retooling, getting rid of stock piles, reorganization; and, third, those of tapering off government controls, not too slowly and not too fast.

The great long-run problem which raises many subsidiary problems will be to keep our economic machine running on high gear as the years go by. We have shown that we can organize a full employment economy for war. If we can do it for peace, most of our problems will be on the way to solution.

Mr. Grauer: That is a not too formidable list, Mr. Clark, and since several of those problems are economic, I am going to direct a question concerning them to our third guest, Mr. Stuart Chase. Mr. Chase, one of our listeners wants to know whether Government economic controls, say like rationing, will be necessary after the war is over.

Mr. Chase: They certainly will be necessary for Mr. Clark's short-term period. I am not so sure about the long-term. But when the war ends, I estimate that 70 per cent of all the activity in this count will be financed by the federal government. That means that directly or indirectly 70 per cent of all our working people including those in the armed forces are more or less on the federal payroll. Now you can't get rid of any such colossal percentage as that in a short time. It has to be gradually demobilized.

Furthermore, there is the whole question of feeding the rest of the world, or the people that desperately need it—the Lend-Lease provision. So there will have to be some kind of export and import controls for a while. Then there will be the whole matter, as Mr. Clark pointed out, of demobilizing our armed forces.

Mr. Grauer: Since I have got you there, Mr. Chase and since we all seem to agree that employment is a tremendous problem, I want to ask you a sort of two-barbed question. A listener asks if our output of goods and services after the war is no greater than it was before the war, how many people will be unemployed?

Mr. Chase: That is an interesting question and, strangely enough, the United States Department of Commerce has recently made a specific study and answered it for us. The answer is 19 million. Nineteen million Americans would be unemployed by producing the same output when the war ends as we produced when the war began. And the fact of that tremendous increase in unemployment theoretically is due to our great increase in technical efficiency during the war.

Mr. Grauer: I see. Since we all agree, too, that to build the America and achieve the goals we are all fighting for there must be limited or no unemployment, what are some of your suggestions for providing jobs after the war for everybody who is able and willing to work?

Mr. Chase: Well, I more or less lean up against a three-point program. Governor Stassen of Minnesota has the same program; Fortune Magazine, the spokesman for large industry, has a similar program. Many Americans are coming toward this program. It consists of three parts; first, and probably the most important part is that private business men shall employ everybody that they can and maybe one or two more, and they should get together. I think you are going to hear from Mr. Hoffman next week on this program.

Mr. Grauer: That is right.

Mr. Chase: They should get together in groups and plan for that right up to the limit. Secondly, for those that private business cannot employ, and they can't employ us all right away because you have to convert over from making war equipment and that takes time—the second point is public works, financed by the federal government and administered by local governments, local people, grass roots; and the third point is social security for everybody.

Mr. Grauer: That is a powerful and ambitious program, sir, and it involves a sense of responsibility by every individual. I think that should lead us to a question which I would like to direct to Mr. Justice Jackson. A listener queries, isn't it probable that we may face so great an urge to normalcy that when the war ends we will lose sight of our post-war goals for America?

Justice Jackson: Well, it is difficult to speak of the probabilities. It certainly is possible and it certainly is not improbable because we face after this war the same urge to normalcy that we faced before. War always produces a weariness and an irritation, vexation with regulations, a certain longing to get back to the old times and forget all about it. That comes at the time when problems are the greatest. I think our postwar problems are going to be as vital to the future of the country as the war problems themselves. If this pressure to a normalcy is here, as it will be, and if it isn't met intelligently and vigorously, of course we will go back to normalcy, whatever that is—and it is pretty bad if it is what I think it is.

Mr. Grauer: We will hope very much for the best. I have a question, Mr. Chase, which comes from a woman factory worker in Ohio, who queries: after the war, will women who are now employed go back to their homes?

Mr. Chase: Well, I have got a daughter who has been working in an airplane plant welding aluminum. She seems to like it pretty well. Whether she wants to give up industry altogether, I don't know. But I have been investigating that subject a little and I find that there are millions and millions of women who are in industry for the first time and you can't throw them out without a lot of kicking and screaming. They are going to stay right there. They are as good as men in many kinds of occupations. They are better in some. While those that went in for patriotic reasons will go back into their homes, we have got, I imagine, three or four million women who will want to stay on the job.

Mr. Grauer: That will add further, then, Mr. Chase, to these problems of employment and readjustment after the war.

Mr. Chase: Yes, but it also gives you a fine, energetic powerhouse to work out these goals with.

Mr. Grauer: Well, Mr. Clark, we have been discussing in this informal discussion period a number of these postwar problems such as unemployment and government control. It is a pretty impressive list. Could you tell us what is being done in an organized way to study these problems?

Mr. Clark: Well, yes, Mr. Grauer. I will give you just a very brief idea. A tremendous amount is being done, as we shall learn from later programs on this series. Most of the federal government agencies, the Treasury, the Department of Agriculture, the Housing Administration, and many others, have special divisions working out peacetime plans in their special fields. State and local bodies all over the country are drawing up programs for postwar public works. A prodigious volume of study and planning is being done by private business: by individual companies, as to their own products and markets, by leading business groups such as the Chamber of Commerce, as to policies for business as a whole. A vast amount of work is also being done by universities, by public welfare and religious groups. As to postwar policies in every field, domestic and international, if the volume of planning bears any relation to results, the years to follow this war hold far more of promise and less of danger than those which followed World War I.

Mr. Grauer: Well, we echo a devout wish, Mr. Clark, that what you say is true and will come to pass, but I am afraid that our time is up. I must thank the participants in the program—Mr. Justice Jackson, Mr. Clark and Mr. Chase, for their participation.

I think I can say safely that our speakers seem to agree on several main points: All of them want us to do something really constructive this time towards making a better and stronger America when this war is over. They all agree, too, that we should start planning for these events, planning for them now. Mr. Clark has brought us news of the great number of agencies now at work in this field in study and research and planning. Mr. Chase discussed very definite and specific goals for providing all Americans with what he called the Big Five—adequate food, housing, clothing, education and health care, and he showed us how great is our capacity to provide these things in this broad land of ours.

Mr. Justice Jackson stressed the importance of the individual and the individual's opinion in making democracy work. In short, all agree that we all must work together toward America's goals.